Steve Jobs' recent missive on the deficiencies of Adobe's Flash is still …

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Steve Jobs' recent missive on the deficiencies of Adobe's Flash is still reverberating around the Internet. In this guest editorial, John Sullivan of the Free Software Foundation responds, arguing that Apple is presenting users with a false choice between Adobe's proprietary software and Apple's walled garden.

Watching two proprietary software companies deeply opposed to computer user freedom lob accusations back and forth about who is more opposed to freedom has been surreal, to say the least. But what's been crystal clear is that the freedom these companies are arguing about is their own, not that of their users. And what they are calling freedom isn't freedom at all—it is the ability to control those users. Adobe is mad at Apple for not letting Adobe control iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch users via Flash, and Apple is mad at Adobe for suggesting that Apple is arbitrarily abusing its control over Application Store users.

Steve Jobs's "Thoughts on Flash" is the latest volley in this bout between pot and kettle, and while it makes many dead-on criticisms of Adobe and Flash, it does not change the fundamental character of this disagreement, nor does it solve any concerns about Apple's broader intentions.

What's strangely absent from "Thoughts on Flash" is any explanation for why proprietary technology on the Web is bad, or why free standards are good. Noting this omission helps us understand why, though we agree with his assessment of the problems with Flash and the importance of free Web standards, Jobs is led to a solution that is bizarre and unacceptable.

If he had said anything about why user freedom on the Web is important, his hypocrisy would have been explicit. In a nutshell, he says, "Don't use Adobe's proprietary platform to engage with information on the Web. Use Apple's." He doesn't want users to freely wander and creatively explore the Web or their own computers; he wants them to move from the fenced-off "Freedom Zone" based in San Jose to the one based in Cupertino.

Freedom on the Web has multiple elements. Free standards like HTML5, which govern Web publishing, are critical and have amazing potential, but they are only one element. Standards are not enough on their own, because there is another layer between them and the computer user—the software used to interact with the Web, and the operating system surrounding it. Freedom in terms of Web publishing does no good if the software with which you access the Web filters it before it ever gets to you, or restricts you in other ways in order to grant access to the Web. Proprietary software can be compatible with free standards while simultaneously undercutting the values those free standards seek to achieve. Such "freedom" will always be contingent. In order to have an actual, irrevocably free Web, both the Web publishing standards and the software which accesses them will need to be free.

Although Jobs talks part of the talk when he says, "we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open," his walk goes the opposite direction, advocating both a proprietary video format, H.264, and proprietary software for engaging it—iPhone OS.

The definition of proprietary software is software which restricts users' freedoms to view its source code, run it for any purpose, share it, or modify it. Jobs himself defines proprietary software when he says:

Adobe's Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system.

The dreaded fine-print EULA is a primary tool software companies use to implement such restrictions. Looking at the EULAs for Apple and Adobe, we can see that they look pretty much the same, and that "iPhone OS" and "Apple" could be substituted for "Adobe" and "Flash" in Jobs's own quote. His implicit admission of this, that "Apple has many proprietary products too," is a comical understatement.

You may install and use one copy of the Software on your compatible Computer.

This license does not grant you the right to sublicense or distribute the Software.

You may not modify, adapt, translate or create derivative works based upon the Software. You will not reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble or otherwise attempt to discover the source code of the Software except to the extent you may be expressly permitted to reverse engineer or decompile under applicable law.

(ii) You shall be authorized to use the Products only for personal, noncommercial use.

(iii) You shall be authorized to use the Products on five Apple-authorized devices at any time, except in the case of Movie Rentals, as described below.

Part of the reason why Flash and iPhone OS are proprietary is that Adobe and Apple agreed to the terms of the H.264 patent license. H.264, despite Jobs's claim, is not a free standard—patents necessary to implement it are held by a group that requires all users to agree to a license with restrictive terms. Those terms have previously even been unavailable for examination online. We are publishing them on fsf.org today in order to comment on their unethical restrictions. The fact that H.264 is a commonly used standard does not make it a free standard—the terms of its use are what matter, and they require all licensed software to include the following notice:

THIS PRODUCT IS LICENSED UNDER THE AVC PATENT PORTFOLIO LICENSE FOR THE PERSONAL AND NON-COMMERCIAL USE OF A CONSUMER TO (I) ENCODE VIDEO IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE AVC STANDARD ("AVC VIDEO") AND/OR (II) DECODE AVC VIDEO THAT WAS ENCODED BY A CONSUMER ENGAGED IN A PERSONAL AND NON-COMMERCIAL ACTIVITY AND/OR WAS OBTAINED FROM A VIDEO PROVIDER LICENSED TO PROVIDE AVC VIDEO. NO LICENSE IS GRANTED OR SHALL BE IMPLIED FOR ANY OTHER USE. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION MAY BE OBTAINED FROM MPEG LA, L.L.C. SEE HTTP://WWW.MPEGLA.COM

Any Web that can be engaged only after agreeing to such terms, whether for software or a standard, is not "free" or "open." It is gated, and its use is restricted. Jobs himself explains the problems with giving up the freedom to use your computer and its software to another, when he says, "[Apple] cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers."

We agree with that statement, and it's exactly why users should not place themselves at the mercy of Apple or H.264 either. If you buy an iPhone OS computer, there is no recourse if Apple makes a decision you do not like. You'll wait on Apple to approve or not approve the application with features you want to use, you'll never be assured that Apple won't remove the application once it's accepted, and you'll wait on Apple to implement any bug fixes or new features, or to take care of your security—even though it's ostensibly your platform, your computer, and part of your life.

Better conclusions

A free Web needs free software. You cannot have a free Web if your access to the software you use to engage the Web is limited to an arbitrary number of computers, or if you are not allowed to conduct business on the Web using the software, or if you are forbidden from asking someone to develop additional features you need.

Jobs has hit the nail on the head when describing the problems with Adobe, but not until after smashing his own thumb. Every criticism he makes of Adobe's proprietary approach applies equally to Apple, and every benefit attributed to the App Store can be had without it being a mandatory proprietary arrangement. Apple can offer quality control and editorial selection over available free software, and encourage users to exclusively—but voluntarily—use their store. Instead, Apple chooses to enforce legal restrictions, the transgression of which is punishable by criminal law, on users who want to make changes to their own computers, like installing free, non-Apple, software.

Fortunately, the way out of the Adobe vs. Apple cage match is straightforward, and exists already: free software operating systems like GNU/Linux with free software Web browsers, supporting free media formats like Ogg Theora. To make things even better, we can continue urging Google to release their new media format, VP8, under a free license as well.

The language of the GNU General Public License, used by thousands of GNU/Linux developers worldwide as the terms for distributing their software, stands in stark contrast to the proprietary EULAs cited above, and provides a useful tool for building and sharing software to actually engage the free Web:

The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed to take away your freedom to share and change the works. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change all versions of a program—to make sure it remains free software for all its users.

When Jobs defensively points to Apple's involvement in WebKit, he inadvertently makes the case for the superiority of free software over his own proprietary App Store approach. WebKit is indeed free software, and Apple did help make it happen. But the success of WebKit is neither Apple's success alone (in fact, some of its advances have been achieved in spite of some uncooperative behavior by Apple) nor is it a result of their proprietary approach. They are one contributor among others, and those others are able to contribute because the software is freely licensed. WebKit users are not at the mercy of Apple—the source code is available and can be legally modified, so anyone is entitled to make and distribute new features or fixes. WebKit is an example of what the free Web can actually be. But, sadly, Jobs can't stand to let it be that—while the core of Safari is WebKit, it is engulfed in other proprietary code, giving Apple leverage we should reject.

So, the correct decision in the dispute between Apple and Adobe is "none of the above." The past we need to leave behind is not just Flash, it's Apple's proprietary software as well. There is plenty of room for them to join us along with everyone else in the free world—but they must stop pretending that their little cages are the free world.

John Sullivan is the operations manager for the Free Software Foundation.

330 Reader Comments

For all the griping about lack of freedom on Apple's system, there sure are a lot of apps. I think the idea of freedom to load what you want is nice but irrelevant as long as you find what you need and most of what you want. And with the additional freedom comes responsibility and frankly, I haven't seen much of that. A lot of freedom has been misused to treat things as free, even when they were not. I much prefer a closed but functional system.

How much did the hardware cost? Who are the companies behind the hardware that you use? What do they support? What are their actions? You try to make all these points about openness and how you cant support open while running a system like iPhone OS. But can you truly say that without laughing at yourself, while you sit there typing on most likely a lenovo, or Asus machine that was engineered on the backs of one of the biggest closed systems in the world? The chinese?

Like i said, let's see who made that hardware you are running your "free" OS on and what they support in the tech world as far as openness is concerned. Because until we see that your point about Apple not being able to support open software while still operating iPhone OS is a fallacy, like most of the FSF arguments.

Also, android is not "free". It's free as in beer, like you said earlier, but the cost is your information. As I said earlier in this thread, Android is the closest that google can get to actually pinning down who a person that uses their search engines actually is. That data they are harvesting from every android user that does a map search, or uses google voice gets the reticule just a little bit closer to nailing down exactly who you are. They have your search data, now they have your search data/gmail/phone number all tied together with one nice little bow. In addition that data is not free nor open, meaning that neither is Android, because that's all Android really is, is a data harvesting google spider that makes you worth a shit ton more money than you are now.

I think one of the concerns is that if any one company holds a vasty majority of the marketshare, then the free market will cease to operate the way it's expected.

Which is precisely the deal with monopolies. It's not always illegal for non-monopolies to act anti-competitively, and it's not illegal for a monopoly to exist. But once you're judged a monopoly, there's an entirely different standard of market behavior. Just because of what you suggest: the free market is no longer free.

cgalyon wrote:

That is, hypothetically, if Apple controls some 80-90% of the smartphone market and mandates that no crossplatform apps will be accepted, developers must choose to either develop an app for the iPhone or for any other phone. If the iPhone makes up 80% of the market, then the choice should be fairly simple. This assumes that Apple will pull an app from the store if it sees the same app released on another platform (certainly a lot of monitoring work for Apple).

Yeesh.. Apple's bad enough at their current 30%-or-so of the smartphone market. But that sort of behavior is illegal even when you're not a monopoly. Even Apple's not doing that... they just want the job of moving your iPhoneOS application to some other platform to be much more difficult. Apple's new policy is much simpler. They will scan the binary of the app you submit, figure out (not that difficult) whether it was a native app or based on a application framework of some kind. In the latter case, they reject the application.

They can get away with that. Killing the app simply because it exists on other platforms, that's illegal.

Of course, when Android is 75% of the smartphone market, and Apple's fighting with RIM, Symbian, and HP for the remaining 25%, they might just change their iTune (sic) about application frameworks and rapid development.

cgalyon wrote:

By way of example, how many times is the size of an app store used as a deciding point for consumers shopping for a phone?

Apple has certainly been using that... but marketing is like that. As soon as Android Marketplace exceeds iTunes store in the number of apps (a matter of when, not if), Apple will use a different thing in their advertising.

This is fundamentally different from a computer in that you only control the information. The system is a black box that comes with the hardware. You can extend supported information and interactions with it with custom applications, but the way system behaves is entirely controlled by Apple, because it is an integral and fixed part of the device. These are fixed function devices. Highly sophisticated, but limited purpose by design. Computers in contrast are by design general purpose and can be made to do anything unless somehow flawed. As a result anyone who believes the iPhone or iPad is a computer will see it and the way Apple handles it as fundamentally flawed. And generally get ignored by Apple since they have no interest in people using iPhone as a (really bad) computer. That is not what people buy them for and what gets Apple revenue and market share.

If that's Apple's position, someone should really tell their marketing department. The basic implication of the "there's an app campaign" is that this is a device that can do a wide variety of things. So wide, in fact, that we can't come anywhere near mentioning them all. These devices all already much closer to "general purpose computer" than "electronic gadget" and it's highly unlikely they'll become less powerful going forward. Even what they're doing on the software side - multitasking, keyboard support, office apps - suggests Apple is pushing these devices more towards a general purpose computer. AT&T doesn't help either by listing the iPhone under "PDA/Smartphone". PDAs usually behave a lot like computers and Apple's restrictions on installing apps are fairly unique in this market.

If people believe the iPhone or iPad is a general purpose computing device, it's kind of hard to blame them.

Here's the central point: the moment I buy *any hardware*, no matter what logos are on it, it's *mine to do with as I please.* EULAs are meaningless. I'll install anything I want on it, including GPL and reverse-engineered versions of Adobe or Apple software. Screw both Apple, Adobe, and their proprietary circle jerk. The only groups protecting your rights as hardware owners from these oligarchs are Open Source supporters like the FSF. Screw the B.S. Alliance and everyone in it.

I can't believe how many people are still deluding themselves that that this is just about "video" or the "Flash plugin."

Of course it isn't just those issues. That doesn't mean we can't extract some beneficial results from the fallout though.

Like all things, the fallout will not be entirely "good". Apple is using Flash as the rationale to tighten things down because he knows it's a good example to use. If Flash were an ingrown toe-nail, Jobs is doing the equivalent of hacking off the whole foot to 'cure' the ingrown toe-nail. But hey... the ingrown toe-nail won't bother us anymore! We win!

A free web has to mean that if you visit someone's home page and want to download and run their free software on your computer, you are able to do that. It has to mean that you don't have to give up freedom to use software to access the internet to get freedom.

No it doesnt. What if that persons software is windows only? Are you living in a world where there is only 1 operating system? Are you classifying everything that can access the internet as a computer? Are you chastising Sony for the PS3 because I cant download and run windows software on my PS3? Or that i cant get the latest update of open office for my PS3? What about Open Office, shouldnt you write them a letter because I cant go to openoffice.org and download a copy for my iPhone from a link to the app store, or for my wii, or for my amiga ro for my webTV or my DVR which has a browser.

Where are all of these people who are accomplishing these things. Do you guys at the FSF have an all runtine all the time OS that we dont know about? When is the year of OS agnostic Linux? WHEN? WHEEEEEEEEEEEENNNNNNNNNNNNNN!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Nobody has come up with a car analogy yet, so here is one ;-) I support Steve Jobs here, because I think openness in an OS and on infrastructure like the web are fundamentally different. What Apple is doing is putting restrictions on what you can do with the cars you buy from that. The Apple car might not be compatible with loads of standard car equipment. What MS and Adobe do however is changing the road system that cars drive on, so that only Windows cars can drive properly on them while Apple and Linux cars will loose control and drive off the road.

The web was made so that people could share information regardless of operating system. All you needed was a compliant web browser. Plugin like flash contribute to ruin the whole advantage of the web in the first place. To be fair Adobe is by no way the worst. I think MS was the big bad wolf here with all their ActiveX controls. They basically made the web a windows world.

I am still reminded of that every day at work. Our bug reporting tool requires ActiveX, so given that I work on a Linux box I have to connect through citrix and run an old crappy internet explorer to access the bug lists. All of the downsides of a web app with non of the benefits.

I don't deny that Apple is a bit over-restrictive on a number of things on iPhone and iPad. But that is their platform. They are not affecting people on other platforms, the way Adobe and MS has done. The restrictions put on the iPhone does not affect other phone users in their access of services on the internet. You don't need to buy an iPhone or Mac if you don't want to. But how many linux and mac users haven't been screwed in the past by inability to access internet banking due to ActiveX controls, or poor performing flash player?

Also, android is not "free". It's free as in beer, like you said earlier, but the cost is your information. As I said earlier in this thread, Android is the closest that google can get to actually pinning down who a person that uses their search engines actually is. That data they are harvesting from every android user that does a map search, or uses google voice gets the reticule just a little bit closer to nailing down exactly who you are. They have your search data, now they have your search data/gmail/phone number all tied together with one nice little bow. In addition that data is not free nor open, meaning that neither is Android, because that's all Android really is, is a data harvesting google spider that makes you worth a shit ton more money than you are now.

Android as deployed and typically used... sure. But it is open source.. you're not forced to do everything the Google way. And it's not the OS proper sending information to Google, it's their various apps. No requirement to use them.

Android exists because Google needed to take on the proprietary smart phone platform. You know why if you have a smart phone. Some years back, if I had a web search in mind, I'd eventually get to my PC, fire up a web browser, and navigate over to Alta Vista... no!!! Google, yeah, that's the one. And run my search. And Google's apparently making their money this way... people doing search, them placing their virtually invisible ads, etc.

So now, I don't run the to PC, I de-pocket my Droid and do the search right there. Unfortunately, before Android, you had a bunch of totally proprietary Smartphones: iPhone, WinMo, PalmOS, Symbian (before they went FOSS), Blackberry, etc. Each and every one of these could, on a whim, drop Google as their default search engine. Sure, I could always pop up a browser, but in a smart phone these days, search gets integrated. And it's better that way... you're searching the phone itself, perhaps, not just the web.

Anyway, making you want to use Android is where Google gets their payoff. That's a critical difference than these others... they're selling you a Phone. Google's making a little on their apps that go along with Android from the phone makers, but they're not caring about the OS itself. They looked around, found just what the phone makers wanted, and did that thing. Making them want Android is a precondition to making you get it. I dunno.. there's a commercial interest there, but it's far less evil than most of the others.

A free web has to mean that if you visit someone's home page and want to download and run their free software on your computer, you are able to do that. It has to mean that you don't have to give up freedom to use software to access the internet to get freedom.

No it doesnt. What if that persons software is windows only? Are you living in a world where there is only 1 operating system? Are you classifying everything that can access the internet as a computer? Are you chastising Sony for the PS3 because I cant download and run windows software on my PS3? Or that i cant get the latest update of open office for my PS3? What about Open Office, shouldnt you write them a letter because I cant go to openoffice.org and download a copy for my iPhone from a link to the app store, or for my wii, or for my amiga ro for my webTV or my DVR which has a browser.

Where are all of these people who are accomplishing these things. Do you guys at the FSF have an all runtine all the time OS that we dont know about? When is the year of OS agnostic Linux? WHEN? WHEEEEEEEEEEEENNNNNNNNNNNNNN!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Load of crap. Developer choosing not to port something versus developer not being allowed by Apple to port something.

What open tools is he promoting. Last I checked, in order to develop for the iPhone, you need their computer running their operating system using their approved set of tools and SDKs. How is that open again?

And then, when Android is 120% of the smartphone market, Hazydave gets to come back and post how awesome his predictions have turned out. I'll be waiting for that day...

Sad, our educational system these days. Like most Apple Zealots, Dlux here is "challenged" when it comes to mathematics. Hey, no worries.. just put on those rose-tinted shades, step back into that reality distortion field, set your brain to "idle", and it'll all be ok. Steve will make it all ok. He'll take objective reality away. Down here, we all float... you'll float, too!

The evangelism of open source idealogues is becoming increasingly tiresome. For one thing, you guys are talking as if the various iProducts don't all include a fully-functional browser.

Secondly, there is nothing hypocritical about saying that content should be open and non-proprietary as long as you're able to think clearly long enough to stop regarding open vs. proprieatry as some manichean struggle. If a system is better served by being proprietary then it should be locked down. You guys think everyone reads Ars and Engadget and knows what's up but they don't. The fact is the median user isn't that smart and the typical developer is generally pretty myopic and self-serving. If you value your product and want it to deliver a quality user experience, the only way to make sure people don't take their liberty too far and do grotesque things to their machines is to yoke them. This is why Facebook has a navigable and functional interface no matter whose profile you look at while MySpace is a clustershag.

The proprieatry nature of the iDevices stops you from running Flash, but it's also what stops spyware and adware from creeping into your system and it will also prevent developers from sneaking crap like Starforce DRM on there.

If nothing else the comments on this article should make the reader aware exactly how much power and how deep an influence a company can have on a certain type of person. I can't fathom why I can't install anything I want on my iPhone (if I owned one). They can't understand why I would want to. The creator has given them everything, the creator will look after them, TRUST THE CREATOR!

One day, there will be an app they want to use that Apple won't let them have. For me, it was Google Voice and Skype over a cellular network. When that day comes, the Creator becomes the enemy.

On the bright side, it makes me smile at how much the Creator must cringe at having to maintain a Windows version of iTunes Deep in the Creators bunker, there are secret plans to remedy this breach in their wall.....

The evangelism of open source idealogues is becoming increasingly tiresome. For one thing, you guys are talking as if the various iProducts don't all include a fully-functional browser.

They don't. No Java. No Flash. No Ogg Theora in a VIDEO tag.

All functions. All things iPxx don't do. Whether those are important things to you or not, not my problem... this is not a fully functional web browser. There are sites that simply do not function. Many of us are engineers or other computer savvy folk, and understand why. Regular users don't give a bloody damn about why it doesn't work, they just want web browsers to all do the same thing. Apple has taken a stand against that... they have embraced being a second class web experience.

They're dicks, plain and simple... most regular people did not know this up front. My sister Kathy loves her iPhone, and she's no dummy... PhD from Stanford, etc. But try to explain why so many sites don't load, or why the iPhone drops calls all the time... I've tried. Why is Jobs so unconcerned about his customers?

In her case, it hasn't killed her love of these heinous devices (though she thinks the iPad is stupid)... she's planning to buy the 4th Gen iPhone in the fall. But I've met far more ex-iPhonies, particularly since Android started getting real.

Load of crap. Developer choosing not to port something versus developer not being allowed by Apple to port something.

"Completely rewriting" is an acceptible way to port things in these people's minds. You won't gain any traction with this argument. But... it's obvious that someone who has never even written a line of code in their lives (much less even opened XCode to look at it) knows how to develop software better than people who have gone to college for several years to learn how to do it and, in some cases, have been programming professionally for decades. We just "don't get it". We're lazy and incompetant. I'm sure I get paid what I do because I don't know what the flying flip I'm doing when I sit at this desk with these computers.

A lot of people don't understand that the FLV file format is apart of the h.263 video codec format. By definition that means that Flash Video IS a internationally recognized standard. Unlike HTML 5, which currently is NOT a standard. HTML 5 is a proposed standard that's not even finished yet. I'm concerned that putting a half baked solution into a computer is a conduit for malware & compromise.

I think Steve Jobs arguments are complete bull. If Flash is so bad for OS-X, doesn't this ultimately prove that security on the OS-X platform is that bad? I run Windows 7 using Chrome, & Chrome sandboxes the Flash plugin as well as the browser window itself. If Flash crashes in Chrome, you just reboot the plugin. I don't have to reboot the web browser. The web browser's sand-boxing protect's me to some degree from Flash's security issues. Why can't Apple fix it's long term security issues & sandbox Flash so it has ZERO reach into a complete takeover of OS-X? Or nullify it's ability to crash a Mac?

Steve is merely trying to monopolize the iPhone/iPod/iPad ecosystem, which is highly illegal under both local & international anti-competition laws. If Adobe was smart, pull the EU & DOJ into this. Prove that Apple is violating either the anti-competition laws of either the Sherman Anti-Trust Act or the Clayton Act. Not necessarily for anti-trust violations, but anti-competition & an attempt to monopolize. I think they have a very good case here. The EU has stronger laws & we know they will prosecute. Force Apple away from this path by legal intervention.

If that doesn't work, Adobe can re-write Flash to eliminate all it's weaknesses & become an HTML 5 killer. Kind of like an anti-terminator Terminator. Make it easy, cross platform, & integrate security features to nullify any weakness. Do that and Apple's arguments fall to the water. Also, if Adobe fully open sources Flash, he kills Steve's argument. Oops... It looks like Adobe's doing that with the Open Screen Project.

I think we need to give Mr. Jobs a drug test. I think Steve's been doing a little too much LSD again.

Also, android is not "free". It's free as in beer, like you said earlier, but the cost is your information. As I said earlier in this thread, Android is the closest that google can get to actually pinning down who a person that uses their search engines actually is. That data they are harvesting from every android user that does a map search, or uses google voice gets the reticule just a little bit closer to nailing down exactly who you are. They have your search data, now they have your search data/gmail/phone number all tied together with one nice little bow. In addition that data is not free nor open, meaning that neither is Android, because that's all Android really is, is a data harvesting google spider that makes you worth a shit ton more money than you are now.

Do you have some proof of this? Or is this conjecture?

While you are at it, do you also have the same insight into iDevices and Apple's new iAds? I am thinking that Apple has access to all of the same information, does farm the information in a similar way, and will be using it in their new ad system. The only difference is that you wouldn't know one way or another how/when they do it (no source code) and you pay more for the priviledge.

Don't pretend that Apple is some last bastion of personal privacy and that Google is only interested in selling your personal information. They both are using that personal information to increase profits. Google just happens to be a bit better than Apple at doing it right now.

Thank you for posting this hit-generating diatribe. You lost me at "Don't use Adobe's proprietary platform to engage with information on the Web. Use Apple's." because that's not what Steve Jobs said. Not at all. Not imaginably.

Yes it is.

grahamwilliams wrote:

What he said was "Adobe is pushing a closed platform that is poorly written. We won't let you use this bad tool to write software for our hardware."

Actually he said this, "We're not letting users use flash because we believe in an open internet." Which of course, when translated, means, "We aren't giving you the freedom to choose who restricts your freedoms--we're making sure you don't let Adobe close your life and we're going to do it for you, because the best way to an open internet is by closing off the internet. And Apple and no one else must be the ones who close it for you."

grahamwilliams wrote:

And that, in a nutshell, is entirely his right. It is also, in my opinion, the right way to go about it. He's promoting open tools to build for his closed platform - one would think that someone from the Free Software Foundation would understand that - tragically not, in this case.

He's not promoting open tools, he's restricting user and developer freedom. While I agree that bad tools shouldn't be used, it is logically impossible to restrict people from using those tools in the name of openness. That is silly, and that's what this article is getting at above all else. In an open world, users and developers would choose between good and bad tools themselves.

grahamwilliams wrote:

You don't control Apple. Apple doesn't control you. It shouldn't shock you, though, that other tech companies appear to believe that Apple has the right idea; we've seen the death of Courier and Slate in extremely short order. With HP acquiring WebOS... er.. I mean Palm, it's clear that more of the industry is going to move to a more secure, more reliable (feel free to debate that) walled garden approach.

Marketing. But yes, I more or less agree with you here. However, this doesn't help your case in defending Steve from charges of hypocrisy. In fact, you contradicted what you said earlier about Apple promoting openness by making the walled garden reference. Good or bad, a walled garden by definition is closed and you can't advocate a walled garden and an open garden at the same time. I can't believe I actually typed that sentence.

grahamwilliams wrote:

The time is short for wide open platforms, unless YOU can come up with something to convince manufacturers and consumers to stay there. If you can't, you'd better get used to developing for iPhone OS, WebOS, and ZuneOS. So there's the challenge - stop misquoting people and start offering alternatives we can get behind.

Again, Steve was never misquoted in this article. You just drank the kool-aid and assume that your leader never could have said something so ignorant. But he did.

The evangelism of open source idealogues is becoming increasingly tiresome. For one thing, you guys are talking as if the various iProducts don't all include a fully-functional browser.

Does fully functional browser by your definition not include the ability to download interesting software you find while browsing the web? Web browsers have been able to do that since the Web was invented. Until now.

And no, the exclusive App Store is not what protects you from malware. A security system to protect the user's security needs to be under the user's control, not someone else's. The iPhone security system is designed to control you and protect Apple. See for example, Bruce Schneier: http://www.wired.com/politics/security/ ... tters_0207. A similar system could be used voluntarily to block malware without saying that it is *illegal* for people to decide they don't want to use it.

The evangelism of open source idealogues is becoming increasingly tiresome. For one thing, you guys are talking as if the various iProducts don't all include a fully-functional browser.

Does fully functional browser by your definition not include the ability to download interesting software you find while browsing the web? Web browsers have been able to do that since the Web was invented. Until now.

These people forget what the web *might* have been like back when Microsoft was killing off the other browsers. What would this "free web" have looked like had Microsoft been able to make it all ActiveX and IE? It's easy to forget the past, particularly while you're enjoying the fruits of ideals that others champion.

Steve is merely trying to monopolize the iPhone/iPod/iPad ecosystem, which is highly illegal under both local & international anti-competition laws. If Adobe was smart, pull the EU & DOJ into this. Prove that Apple is violating either the anti-competition laws of either the Sherman Anti-Trust Act or the Clayton Act. Not necessarily for anti-trust violations, but anti-competition & an attempt to monopolize. I think they have a very good case here. The EU has stronger laws & we know they will prosecute. Force Apple away from this path by legal intervention.

Quote:

If that doesn't work [It won't - Ed.], Adobe can re-write Flash to eliminate all it's weaknesses & become an HTML 5 killer. Kind of like an anti-terminator Terminator. Make it easy, cross platform, & integrate security features to nullify any weakness. Do that and Apple's arguments fall to the water. Also, if Adobe fully open sources Flash, he kills Steve's argument. Oops... It looks like Adobe's doing that with the Open Screen Project.

Quote:

I think we need to give Mr. Jobs a drug test. I think Steve's been doing a little too much LSD again.

I think one of the concerns is that if any one company holds a vasty majority of the marketshare, then the free market will cease to operate the way it's expected.

Which is precisely the deal with monopolies. It's not always illegal for non-monopolies to act anti-competitively, and it's not illegal for a monopoly to exist. But once you're judged a monopoly, there's an entirely different standard of market behavior. Just because of what you suggest: the free market is no longer free.

cgalyon wrote:

That is, hypothetically, if Apple controls some 80-90% of the smartphone market and mandates that no crossplatform apps will be accepted, developers must choose to either develop an app for the iPhone or for any other phone. If the iPhone makes up 80% of the market, then the choice should be fairly simple. This assumes that Apple will pull an app from the store if it sees the same app released on another platform (certainly a lot of monitoring work for Apple).

Yeesh.. Apple's bad enough at their current 30%-or-so of the smartphone market. But that sort of behavior is illegal even when you're not a monopoly. Even Apple's not doing that... they just want the job of moving your iPhoneOS application to some other platform to be much more difficult. Apple's new policy is much simpler. They will scan the binary of the app you submit, figure out (not that difficult) whether it was a native app or based on a application framework of some kind. In the latter case, they reject the application.

They can get away with that. Killing the app simply because it exists on other platforms, that's illegal.

Of course, when Android is 75% of the smartphone market, and Apple's fighting with RIM, Symbian, and HP for the remaining 25%, they might just change their iTune (sic) about application frameworks and rapid development.

cgalyon wrote:

By way of example, how many times is the size of an app store used as a deciding point for consumers shopping for a phone?

Apple has certainly been using that... but marketing is like that. As soon as Android Marketplace exceeds iTunes store in the number of apps (a matter of when, not if), Apple will use a different thing in their advertising.

Pretty much everything you wrote there was wrong. You could still take your code base and use it in any cross compiler and release subpar software for the many other platforms.

You are pretty much just making stuff up. It has nothing to do with the application being on another platform. It has everything to do with writing your application with outdated intermediary layers.

Also, android is not "free". It's free as in beer, like you said earlier, but the cost is your information. As I said earlier in this thread, Android is the closest that google can get to actually pinning down who a person that uses their search engines actually is. That data they are harvesting from every android user that does a map search, or uses google voice gets the reticule just a little bit closer to nailing down exactly who you are. They have your search data, now they have your search data/gmail/phone number all tied together with one nice little bow. In addition that data is not free nor open, meaning that neither is Android, because that's all Android really is, is a data harvesting google spider that makes you worth a shit ton more money than you are now.

Android as deployed and typically used... sure. But it is open source.. you're not forced to do everything the Google way. And it's not the OS proper sending information to Google, it's their various apps. No requirement to use them.

Android exists because Google needed to take on the proprietary smart phone platform. You know why if you have a smart phone. Some years back, if I had a web search in mind, I'd eventually get to my PC, fire up a web browser, and navigate over to Alta Vista... no!!! Google, yeah, that's the one. And run my search. And Google's apparently making their money this way... people doing search, them placing their virtually invisible ads, etc.

So now, I don't run the to PC, I de-pocket my Droid and do the search right there. Unfortunately, before Android, you had a bunch of totally proprietary Smartphones: iPhone, WinMo, PalmOS, Symbian (before they went FOSS), Blackberry, etc. Each and every one of these could, on a whim, drop Google as their default search engine. Sure, I could always pop up a browser, but in a smart phone these days, search gets integrated. And it's better that way... you're searching the phone itself, perhaps, not just the web.

Anyway, making you want to use Android is where Google gets their payoff. That's a critical difference than these others... they're selling you a Phone. Google's making a little on their apps that go along with Android from the phone makers, but they're not caring about the OS itself. They looked around, found just what the phone makers wanted, and did that thing. Making them want Android is a precondition to making you get it. I dunno.. there's a commercial interest there, but it's far less evil than most of the others.

"you're not forced to do everything the Google way. And it's not the OS proper sending information to Google, it's their various apps. No requirement to use them. "

Ahh but you are. You have to follow guidelines set by google that nobody talks about, or no Android Market for you (ehemm archos) Or no Google phone branding, so no google Nav. It's not all free open candy bars and lollipops.

I can't believe how many people are still deluding themselves that that this is just about "video" or the "Flash plugin."

Of course it isn't just those issues. That doesn't mean we can't extract some beneficial results from the fallout though.

Like all things, the fallout will not be entirely "good". Apple is using Flash as the rationale to tighten things down because he knows it's a good example to use. If Flash were an ingrown toe-nail, Jobs is doing the equivalent of hacking off the whole foot to 'cure' the ingrown toe-nail. But hey... the ingrown toe-nail won't bother us anymore! We win!

What can I say Fitten? I'm a pragmatist. I no longer want to have to make the choice of burning my thighs or putting on jeans just to enjoy a few Youtube videos on my Mac or Ubuntu laptops. That's my immediate concern. Any argument to the contrary has to outweigh that desire for me.

Flash has never been great, but over the last 18 months or so the situation has grown unacceptable. Regardless, I still retain control of my wallet should Apple's ecosystem prove too restrictive for my liking.

And the most contentious part: While I recognize that the most vocal commenters on this board are loathe to concede this point, Jobs has valid concerns w.r.t. Adobe's historical responsiveness to embracing platform advances. I think that Apple has cast their net too wide, but as far as the net effect for me as a consumer? I'm unsure that it will be a net negative in the long run.

Sure, some devs will abandon the platform, but at the same time I won't have to sift untold numbers of shitty Flash ports in the store. Apple seems to be taking a lighter touch with some of the better utilized tools like Unity, so we'll see.

I already sidestep the majority of Apple's restrictions on the iDevices, and as long as it remains possible for me to correct any deficiencies as I see them, I am content.

Oh don't you know it, Hazy. But I see that you put "challenged' in "quotes" so I guess it's opposite day today!

No, nothing like that... I just use quote around the politically correct words I use to replace the word I really want to use. I'm from Jersey... I could have said "frickin' igit retardo" or something, but I do realize this is read in places like California, where it'll just ruin some folks' days if they see words they don't like. But that's another argument, entirely.

dlux wrote:

Seriously, though, Android at 75% marketshare? Wherever do you get that figure?

To quote the great Linus Pauling, "I made it up". Of course, he was talking about electro-negativity at the time, and got a Nobel Prize out of the deal.

But seriously... follow history. Proprietary systems have a hard time in the face of open systems. And in fact, all you need is vendor level openness... anyone can play. So today, every phone vendor other than Nokia, Palm/HP, Apple and RIM are delivering Android phones. Motorola entered the Android market in November... last quarter, they sold 1/4 as many smart phones, globally, as Apple. Just one Android vendor, and it's still pretty early for Android... it's been a sold year-and-a-half.

The Android Marketplace is an easy second place, now slightly larger than 1/4 the size of the iTunes app store, in terms of apps. It needs work, but it's doing quite well. And doubling in size every four months, right now anyway.

Apple has a nice lead in consumer smart phones, but they're not as huge as everyone thinks. In the larger market for all smartpones, RIM is still first in the USA, Nokia still first globally. But follow the Androids. Like RIM, there are multiple Android phones on every US carrier... iPhone is still only AT&T. If Apple doesn't fix that, that inherently limits their market.

China Mobile is selling Android phones in China... China Mobile is earth's largest mobile phone company, larger than T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint combined.. 1/2 billion customers. Much like Verizon, China Mobile rejected Apple's demands back in 2007. Apple's been selling unlocked iPhones out of their Hong Kong stores, trying to get into the Chinese market, as they tried to get some deal in China, and failed. Android's in India, Europe, South America, as well as here in the old NA.

In short, it's better for phone makers than MS-DOS was in the early days of the IBM PC Clone. Don't forget, before the IBM PC, there were a bunch of proprietary computer systems. Apple and Tandy were dominant in the USA, Commodore in Europe. Before you knew it, Apple was a tiny part of the market, and most of the others vanished. I don't believe for a minute that Apple's going to fail -- the iPod will remain a very good market. But no single company can every dominate a healthy market, against a multi-vendor standard. It has never happened, and it never will.

I'm entirely with John Sullivan here, Apple restricting hardware and software, i could see the logic of it back in the dark ages (Windows 95), since it meant they could design software for a limited ecosystem of hardware.But now? no, i dont see it anymore, Apple even opened up Mac for other operating systems, i'm not sure why they want to keep the iDevice's as their own little sandbox again, it's not like that strategy worked the first time around.Diversity breeds progress, that's the long and short of it. The harder you try to 'stay pure' the slower you will adapt or evolve.

Also, android is not "free". It's free as in beer, like you said earlier, but the cost is your information. As I said earlier in this thread, Android is the closest that google can get to actually pinning down who a person that uses their search engines actually is. That data they are harvesting from every android user that does a map search, or uses google voice gets the reticule just a little bit closer to nailing down exactly who you are. They have your search data, now they have your search data/gmail/phone number all tied together with one nice little bow. In addition that data is not free nor open, meaning that neither is Android, because that's all Android really is, is a data harvesting google spider that makes you worth a shit ton more money than you are now.

Do you have some proof of this? Or is this conjecture?

While you are at it, do you also have the same insight into iDevices and Apple's new iAds? I am thinking that Apple has access to all of the same information, does farm the information in a similar way, and will be using it in their new ad system. The only difference is that you wouldn't know one way or another how/when they do it (no source code) and you pay more for the priviledge.

Don't pretend that Apple is some last bastion of personal privacy and that Google is only interested in selling your personal information. They both are using that personal information to increase profits. Google just happens to be a bit better than Apple at doing it right now.

Just think about all the 'services' of an android phone. And then go and read those EULA's. Google does not EVER give anything away. This is in no way relating to iAd. Apple doesnt own the email servers most of it's users use, they dont own the map services most of their users use, they dont own the secondary phone interface that google does and offers on android. If you cant see how this increases their individual search targeting by leaps and bounds, then I dont know what to tell you.

The evangelism of open source idealogues is becoming increasingly tiresome. For one thing, you guys are talking as if the various iProducts don't all include a fully-functional browser.

Does fully functional browser by your definition not include the ability to download interesting software you find while browsing the web? Web browsers have been able to do that since the Web was invented. Until now.

And no, the exclusive App Store is not what protects you from malware. A security system to protect the user's security needs to be under the user's control, not someone else's. The iPhone security system is designed to control you and protect Apple. See for example, Bruce Schneier: http://www.wired.com/politics/security/ ... tters_0207. A similar system could be used voluntarily to block malware without saying that it is *illegal* for people to decide they don't want to use it.

Besides, iPhone OS security has also already been broken, many times.

A browser and software are not the same thing, why you keep linking them I do not know, in the PDA days the same thing applied, you couldnt just download any software you found on the web and start using it. Of course talking of the iPhone if you did find a link on a site to some software you could download it, from the app store.. The joojoo is a LINUX based tablet that's OS is a browser. The ONLY plugin it runs is flash really badly. There is no downloading software.

So i ask. Where is the 2000 word diatribe on Fusion Garage and their proprietary systems. I mean you cant download ANYTHING on it.

Actually the point of comparing Early Nintendo and Modern Apple is valid during the NES and SNES eras Nintendo controlled the software loaded on to there devices by forcing 3rd party devlopers to submit games for approval and produced the carts with a lockout chip to keep unoffical titles off. This was a move to prevent the flood of crappy game that killed the atari 2600 and took the entire market with it. apple is doing a modern thing by forcing use of there app store for there devices.

Oh don't you know it, Hazy. But I see that you put "challenged' in "quotes" so I guess it's opposite day today!

No, nothing like that... I just use quote around the politically correct words I use to replace the word I really want to use. I'm from Jersey... I could have said "frickin' igit retardo" or something, but I do realize this is read in places like California, where it'll just ruin some folks' days if they see words they don't like. But that's another argument, entirely.

dlux wrote:

Seriously, though, Android at 75% marketshare? Wherever do you get that figure?

To quote the great Linus Pauling, "I made it up". Of course, he was talking about electro-negativity at the time, and got a Nobel Prize out of the deal.

But seriously... follow history. Proprietary systems have a hard time in the face of open systems. And in fact, all you need is vendor level openness... anyone can play. So today, every phone vendor other than Nokia, Palm/HP, Apple and RIM are delivering Android phones. Motorola entered the Android market in November... last quarter, they sold 1/4 as many smart phones, globally, as Apple. Just one Android vendor, and it's still pretty early for Android... it's been a sold year-and-a-half.

The Android Marketplace is an easy second place, now slightly larger than 1/4 the size of the iTunes app store, in terms of apps. It needs work, but it's doing quite well. And doubling in size every four months, right now anyway.

Apple has a nice lead in consumer smart phones, but they're not as huge as everyone thinks. In the larger market for all smartpones, RIM is still first in the USA, Nokia still first globally. But follow the Androids. Like RIM, there are multiple Android phones on every US carrier... iPhone is still only AT&T. If Apple doesn't fix that, that inherently limits their market.

China Mobile is selling Android phones in China... China Mobile is earth's largest mobile phone company, larger than T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint combined.. 1/2 billion customers. Much like Verizon, China Mobile rejected Apple's demands back in 2007. Apple's been selling unlocked iPhones out of their Hong Kong stores, trying to get into the Chinese market, as they tried to get some deal in China, and failed. Android's in India, Europe, South America, as well as here in the old NA.

In short, it's better for phone makers than MS-DOS was in the early days of the IBM PC Clone. Don't forget, before the IBM PC, there were a bunch of proprietary computer systems. Apple and Tandy were dominant in the USA, Commodore in Europe. Before you knew it, Apple was a tiny part of the market, and most of the others vanished. I don't believe for a minute that Apple's going to fail -- the iPod will remain a very good market. But no single company can every dominate a healthy market, against a multi-vendor standard. It has never happened, and it never will.

In the computer world a truly open system has never come out on top, certainly not in the consumer space. Where are all those perfect open systems that are owning the market? If what you said was true we would have all been using linux a long ass time ago.

I can't believe how many people are still deluding themselves that that this is just about "video" or the "Flash plugin."

Of course it isn't just those issues. That doesn't mean we can't extract some beneficial results from the fallout though.

Like all things, the fallout will not be entirely "good". Apple is using Flash as the rationale to tighten things down because he knows it's a good example to use. If Flash were an ingrown toe-nail, Jobs is doing the equivalent of hacking off the whole foot to 'cure' the ingrown toe-nail. But hey... the ingrown toe-nail won't bother us anymore! We win!

What can I say Fitten? I'm a pragmatist. I no longer want to have to make the choice of burning my thighs or putting on jeans just to enjoy a few Youtube videos on my Mac or Ubuntu laptops. That's my immediate concern. Any argument to the contrary has to outweigh that desire for me.

So... you have accepted the logic that dogs don't have thumbs, dogs are mammals, therefore no mammal has thumbs argument that Steve Jobs has presented you.

Steve says "Flash is bad". Flash is a third party development environment/language that is not C/C++/ObjC. Therefore, all third party development environments and languages are bad and therefore banned.

Proof of this logical falacy: Most of the great (as in: selling like hotcakes) 3D games on the App store are, in fact, written using 3rd party environments (libraries) (one of the most popular and widely praised as being 'great' ones is named Unity3D). This is compounded by the fact that Unity3D isn't even written in the blessed C/C++/ObjC native language Holy Trinity that Steve has declared as being *required* to write "good stuff" as all other languages produce "shovelware" apps.

Maybe web developers should focus of delivering content rather than loading their websites up with extraneous cruft?

Nah that would be silly. Better to demand that Apple open the gates and let the barbarians run roughshod all over my system.

Quote:

Does fully functional browser by your definition not include the ability to download interesting software you find while browsing the web? Web browsers have been able to do that since the Web was invented. Until now.

Oh right. Because it makes sense to treat a phone as if it's a computer. From this line of reasoning you might as well get on apple's case for not running .exe files.

Pretty much everything you wrote there was wrong. You could still take your code base and use it in any cross compiler and release subpar software for the many other platforms.

You are clearly not a programmer. There's no magical cross compiler that make my iPhone application work on an Android system.

What you're confused about is the term "application framework"... I used it, go back and read. An application framework is an intermediate programming model, a way to do the same things using one API model but fairly easily port to multiple platforms. You call this "outdated intermediary(sic) layers".

It's not the outdated application framework Apple fears. It's the updated one. For example, adding multitasking in iPhoneOS 4.0. The current iPhoneOS is the only single tasking (from the applications viewpoint) operating system left in common use on the planet. So every framework already fully supports multitasking. What Apple's worried about is the move to iPhoneOS 4.0 encouraging developers to start using these APIs, and thus, more easily support other smart phone platforms.

Apple claims you can update your iPhone app to 4.0 in about two hours per app. Let's accept that. So now, assume you have 20 apps.. that's 40 hours, plus testing. If you don't screw up. Annoying, but if you're an iPhone developer, you're probably going to do it.

Now let's say you have 20 apps written on some cross platform framework. These are not usually ancient, they tend to be very well supported, because they're updated regularly for every new target OS, not just Apple's. You get the iPhoneOS 4.0 link library... and an hour later, all 20 apps are now updated to do basic iPhone 4.0 things. You may need a little more work if there's something more specific to do. It's pretty obvious Apple knows this will happen, which is why they're outlawing this stuff before iPhoneOS 4.0 comes out. The last thing they want is to make Android support even easier for iPhone developers. I mean, each time they reject an app, they make a new Android developer already.

And yeah, I DO have the Commodore 64 emulator on my Droid... the one that Apple rejected. It doesn't seem to be threatening the very existence of Google or Motorola in the same way that it seemed to be do damning to Apple and the iPhone. Maybe I just don't get it. But I'm hoping for the sequel.. I have a personal attachement to the Commodore 128...

Dillinger wrote:

You are pretty much just making stuff up. It has nothing to do with the application being on another platform. It has everything to do with writing your application with outdated intermediary layers.

Sorry I'm using polysyllabic words, but no, I'm not making up anything. But clearly, you're not a developer. Or if you are, hopefully there's a warrenty on that degree...

In the computer world a truly open system has never come out on top, certainly not in the consumer space. Where are all those perfect open systems that are owning the market? If what you said was true we would have all been using linux a long ass time ago.

Do you use HTTP for anything? You must not, I'm guessing. It's open. Therefore it must suck. Therefore, no one must be using it. What about Apache? Ever use it? Ever hear of it being used? Guess not.

The proprieatry nature of the iDevices stops you from running Flash, but it's also what stops spyware and adware from creeping into your system and it will also prevent developers from sneaking crap like Starforce DRM on there.

Well, so long as Apple's system is literally flawless. As it stands now, getting an update out involves sending the whole app through a relatively slow and mostly opaque approval process again. If a mistake ever does get through, there's really no way to roll out a security patch in a timely manner.